Corsair Nova V128 Solid State Drive Review

High end products are always great to benchmark and gawk at but the vast majority of consumers will likely be looking for something that offers value instead of bleeding edge performance. To capitalize on this fact of modern economics, Corsair has recently released the Nova line of solid state drives and today we are going to take the time to put the 128GB version through its paces. While the Force and Corsair X-series are designed to take care of the enthusiast customer niche, the Nova is targeted at people who want to get their feet wet in the SSD pool, yet don’t want to spend a fortune on a product they may not feel is worth the investment.

Not that long ago we looked at G. Skill’s foray into the world mid-tier of Indilinx based Solid State Drives with the Falcon 2 and came away impressed with its performance. However, it seems that Corsair has taken a much more rational approach to their entry into this value-orientated market niche as this unit is not called an “X2” or some such. Rather, the Nova series is a separate and distinct line within Corsair’s current offerings.

Corsair is very upfront about the Nova’s value orientation and in fact, one can make the argument that this is Corsair’s version of Kingston “SSDNow V+” or other manufactures “Value” series. This does make a fair amount of sense as this SSD does use slightly slower (and less capable) NAND when compared to a full speed Indilinx drive like the X128 but it still has that potent Barefoot controller in it.

As is par for the course with Corsair products, finding a Nova-series drive at a e-tailer or retailer will not be overly difficult. The other side of this equation is the fact that our review unit is still a fairly large SSD and as such commands a hefty price of about $350CAD. This does place it in full speed Indilinx controller based SSD territory so the biggest question we have is not how good is this drive going to perform versus some slightly lower-price competition. We should also mention that a 64GB version is also available for around $199 CAD. Basically, we know Nova is going to be a decent drive, but is it going to be one that has been priced a tad too high for the new realities of a competitive marketplace? Let’s find out.